MadSci Network: Medicine
Query:

Re: burning calories

Date: Thu Jul 30 21:21:42 1998
Posted By: Frederick Sweet, Ph.D. Ob-Gyn, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis MO
Area of science: Medicine
ID: 901774356.Me
Message:

The Cold Water Vest for weight loss may sound neat in theory but in practice would not be a good way to go.

In theory, raising the temperature of 1 liter of water by one degree Celsius (from body heat or any other heat) takes 1,000 calories. The lower the temperature of the water in the Cold Water Vest the faster this would happen. If all of the warming of the water came from body heat then in theory the body would have to replace this by burning 1,000 calories of fat (or sugar). Note that this is only one of the calories we usually talk about in reference to food, which are actually kilocalories (KCal), or 1000 times the calorie that represents the amount of energy it takes to raise 1 liter of water one degree Celsius. However, to keep this going the Cold Water Vest would have to have some kind of refrigeration system to keep removing the heat.

In practice, the body must remain at about 37-degrees Celsius (98.6-degrees Fahrenheit) to function normally. So in all likelihood if the Cold Water Vest is capable of extracting heat from someone fast enough to make some fat burning difference, hypothermia would quickly set in. This is a condition in which the body temperature decreases below 37-degrees Celsius and shock begins to set in (lowering of blood pressure and repiratory rates).

Indeed, people who fall into cold water can barely survive for more than a few hours even when the water temperature is merely midway between normal body temperature and that of ice water at zero degrees Celsius (that is 18.5-degrees Celsius or 65.3-degrees Fahrenheit). When the water temperature is near that of ice-water, someone would only survive for a few minutes. This fact was nicely represented in the last scenes of the movie "Titanic."

In concluson, for losing weight there is no substitute (including the Cold Water Vest) for moving more (i.e., exercise) while eating less (i.e., well- balanced weight loss diet recommended by a doctor familiar with your health).


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